Shadowman (10 page)

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Authors: Erin Kellison

BOOK: Shadowman
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“I understand this must be very disorienting,” Thorne said. His eyes were full of trouble.
“To say the least.”
“And Khan is quite the enigma.” A little sarcasm there.
“Takes one to know one.”
Thorne gave her a half smile with a short chuckle. “I'm going to ask for your patience on those answers of yours. I've got more than a few questions myself. This has taken me by surprise, too.”
“What did Khan tell you?” The information disconnect was unsettling, but her sense of displacement was more so. She normally felt like she didn't belong, a remnant from her childhood. Now she felt like the ultimate outsider. Magic? Madness. Where the hell was Khan? Why did she have that . . . that pain attack?
Thorne sighed. Scratched his head. Shrugged. “Some business about a gate. I'll have to make a call before I know what he was talking about.”
“A gate?” Layla felt sick to her stomach.
Thorne dropped his arm. “You see one recently?”
In a nightmare. When I was knocked unconscious.
But she didn't verbalize it. She'd sound like she was out of her mind. And after today, she just might be.
Another chuckle. “Well, it must be pretty bad.”
It's evil
, the blacksmith, Khan, had said.
“But not real,” Layla replied. “Right?”
Adam gave her a look of extreme patience. “You tell me. You're the one who just passed through Shadow to get here.”
There was that word again: Shadow. Khan's term for magic. Just how far did his power extend? Could he mess with her dreams?
“Can you tell me what he is?” Maybe then she'd be able to get a handle on what had happened. If she listened closely she could almost hear that damning
kat-a-kat.
“So you can put it in your story? Expose him and his kind to the masses? I don't think so. And anyway, it's not my place.”
If Khan and his kind had this much power, the masses had a right to know. “Khan didn't seem to have a problem filling me in.”
Adam gazed at her long enough for her to feel utterly stupid.
Of course. Khan had told her only what he wanted her to know. And then he'd delivered her to a place where she could be controlled. She was finally inside the castle of secrets and magic. She'd thought the place was scary before; now she found it utterly terrifying. And no one even knew she was there.
Adam's expression mellowed. “You obviously know quite a bit more than you did a few days ago. And if you hang out here long enough, you're bound to discover more. Frankly, I worry for the safety of my wife and children should you make public certain private matters.”
“It is not my intention to hurt anyone.”
“I'm saying, be careful.”
There was no mistaking the warning that time. Why the hell were they going to let her stay? Just because Khan said so? “If it were up to you, I'd already be on your plane back to New York. Why am I here? What is Khan's hold over you?”
“You jump to a lot of conclusions. It's a dangerous habit.”
“Then set me straight.”
Tell me something.
Adam looked down at the floor for a long moment. When he raised his head again, Layla knew that answers would not be forthcoming. “I'll arrange for a room and, uh, give my wife a heads-up that you'll be staying with us. If you're hungry, kitchen's through there. Help yourself to whatever you like. How about I find you there in say”—he looked at his watch—“an hour? I should have everything ready by then.”
He'd have to answer her questions eventually, but for now, she let it go.
“The kitchen,” she agreed. Felt weird to accept hospitality from him, though. He was supposed to be one of the bad guys. Now she didn't know what to think.
Layla watched in amazement as Adam strode through the large connecting rooms to the elevator. No guards left behind. Just her. Alone.
“Okay, then,” she said to break the silence. “Food.”
Layla turned in the direction Adam had indicated—couldn't be
that
hard to find—and halted, perspiration slicking her skin with one thud of her heart.
A semitransparent child of eight or nine stood before her, her fancy little dress accented by a large, triangular collar of lace. Her hair was coiled in fat yellow ringlets around her face. Her shiny black shoes stood primly together. Her hands were fisted. But it was the naked loathing and spite in the child's eyes that made Layla go fish cold. She didn't dare breathe.
Ghost. She was seeing things again. The child couldn't possibly exist.
“How dare you bring
him
here?”
Bring whom? Khan?
Layla shook her head and took a slow step back from the little girl. “N-no. He brought me.”
“The
worst
of them. The
darkest
of them.” The little girl wrinkled her nose. “You let him
touch
you.”
It wasn't like that, Layla wanted to assure her. Khan just had a way about him that . . .
“This was once a good place. But now it's bad. Bad!
Bad!
” the child shrieked. The black pupils of her eyes swallowed the irises, then the whites. The rounded flesh of her cheeks went sallow and hollow, beyond the cast of illness. The curls unraveled into ratty string as the girl's height seemed to stretch upward.
Layla closed her eyes and willed the specter away. This wasn't happening. She was exhausted and stressed, was all.
“You've got to be kidding me,” a woman said.
Layla's eyes snapped open. Young. Black hair, dye job fading and growing out. Bad mood written all over her face. Zoe Maldano.
“Ghost,” Layla said, gasping, though the apparition had vanished. When Layla was a kid, she'd told grown-ups about some of the odd things she'd seen. No one had believed her. No one ever believed her.
“Well, duh,” Zoe said. “Place is fucking haunted. What kind of shitty reporter are you not to know the first thing about Segue?”
“It—She—” Zoe acted like the ghost was a matter of course. First Shadow, now this.
Zoe raised a dismissive hand as she walked away. “And weren't you going to out Adam and Talia to the world? Wasn't that our deal?”
Layla hurried after her. No way she was going to be left in that hallway, alone again with the demon child. “Can she hurt people?”
“I don't know,” Zoe said, slapping a swinging door open. “She doesn't bug me.”
“She
hates
me.” Layla followed her into the kitchen.
“You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.”
No, she most definitely was not. And if this ghost was real, was near ready to spin its dolly head around on its neck, then Khan's magic was real
.
The awful gate, too? But she'd been
dreaming.
Khan's place was full of all that expensive furniture, not an anvil and a gate.
Nothing made sense.
“Tray ready?” Zoe asked another woman, who was fussing over the stove. The woman was petite and curvy, her short red hair pulled back into two cute pigtails at the base of her head.
“One sec,” the woman answered. She lifted a frying pan and scraped some decadent-looking pasta onto a waiting plate. The savory smells of butter and garlic made Layla's mouth water, in spite of the continued pounding of her heart.
“Thanks,” Zoe said, but she didn't sound all that grateful. She lifted the tray and moved back to the door, using her hip to ease herself out into the series of connecting rooms. Zoe had to have nerves of steel to cross through those haunted rooms. Nerves of freakin' steel.
The cook put her hands on her hips and regarded Layla. “Adam called and said you'd be over.”
Layla pointed toward the door. Zoe didn't care, but maybe this lady would. Somebody should. “There's a ghost out there.”
The cook laughed. “Which one?”
“Little girl?”
“Ah. That would be Lady Therese Amunsdale. I've heard of her, but never had the pleasure myself.” She walked over and held out her hand. “I'm Marcie. I keep people fed around here. You hungry?”
A normal question. Layla liked normal. She grabbed hold and went with it.
“Starved, but I can fix something for myself.” She glanced back at the still-swinging door. Could the ghost child come in here, too?
Marcie waved at her with a dishcloth. “Just sit down. I live to cook.”
“She always that unpleasant?”
“Which one? The ghost or Zoe?” Marcie opened the fridge, pulled out bunches of green herbs.
Layla shrugged. “Both, I guess.”
“The ghost is supposedly a mean piece of work and can appear as a child or as a grown woman. The child version sounds creepier to me. I've been assured she can't act on the physical world, which means she can't hurt you unless she scares you to death.” She looked up from the herbs she was chopping and splashed some of the pasta water into the pan, sloshed it around with more butter and garlic.
“Zoe . . .” Marcie continued. “Well, if you're going to be staying here, you might as well know. She's a sad case. Her sister Abigail is very ill, going to die, I hear. So yeah, Zoe might have an attitude problem, but no one holds it against her. Anyone can see how much she loves Abigail.”
“What's wrong with her?” Layla put a hip up on a stool.
Marcie shrugged. “I don't know. Like everything else around here, it's top secret. This place collects odd sorts. And when I say odd, I mean scary. Abigail is special.” Marcie leaned in. “I've heard that she can foretell the future, and that it's killing her. I don't know
what
she is, or her sister, for that matter, but they aren't like you and me.” Marcie straightened again, her voice rising. “But Zoe takes up the trays and she brings them down again. Sits by Abigail a good part of every day. Sleeps in the same room. She's got a foul mouth, but she's a good sister.”
So Zoe's bizarre aura a couple days ago might have been real? Layla didn't know what to think about that.
Layla swallowed hard. “Are there more ghosts?”
“A few. But they're the least of your worries. The wraiths, for one, will scare your hair white in a matter of seconds. First time I heard that screech I just about wet myself. And then there's the fae—” Marcie lifted her gaze. “Well hello, handsome.”
The what?
But a man—young, fit—strode around the island counter and gave Marcie a kiss on the cheek. “Make me some, too, will you?”
“Anything for you.” Marcie's voice was all warmth. “How's Annabella?”
“Happy. She misses the babies.” The man turned and Layla almost fell off her stool. His coloring was unnatural, veins a dark gray driving through olive skin. He was bulky with muscle, like a trim boxer, and beautiful. His green-eyed gaze felt hot and piercing. If not for the strangeness of his skin, he could have been one of those intensely beautiful watchers from the street in New York. Yes, exactly like them.
“You're Layla?”
She nodded.
What weird thing are you?
“Well, you seem okay now. Adam's call made it sound like I'd killed you.” He took a seat next to her, elbows on the counter, fingers laced, head tilted to keep his gaze on her face.
“Killed me?” She tried for a smile, as if to say,
Please don't.
“The gate. I had no idea I could hurt anyone by banging on it. I am very sorry that I caused you pain.” The intense concern in his expression proved the truth of his words.
“So it
is
real.”
“You bet. And since I harmed you by trying to dismantle it, I figure you ought to know.”
Khan had tricked her then. He'd done something with the warehouse, or her head, which bore some thought. Quiet thought. “I think I'm okay. I don't hurt now.”
And actually, she didn't. She only felt hungry—a new batch of pasta hit the pan—and that was about to be taken care of. She would deal with the rest later.
“The damn gate didn't take a dent either.” The man gripped his shoulder. “But
I'm
sore.”
“Khan made it.” Which was to say, he used magic. “So it's not . . . ordinary,” she finished lamely.
The man dropped his gaze to the counter and seemed to fight a smile. “‘Khan,' huh?”
“Yeah.” Why was that funny? “And you are?”
He looked back over. “I'm Custo. It's interesting to meet you, Ms. Mathews. You pose quite a conundrum.”

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